Generally I like my lifestyle and have been writing about how great it is to do something different, even when it’s challenging to do so. But I figured that today it’s worth sharing a self centred grumble, whilst I have one of my brief windows of pessimism – which are few and far between enough to be treasured.

Having struck gold and been offered a housesit where I can set up my full studio there, including monitors, things were looking great. But somehow the weekend has turned into one big frustration, mainly because it’s now sunday and I’m not even at the house yet!

Had huge trouble getting my full studio kit out of storage, my phone broke and made me late for a paid gig last night. These are just a couple of reasons why I’ve ended up driving to the housesit today and not yesterday. Not sleeping much last night, getting out of bed to make the drive there was a bigger effort than I really care to admit. 3hrs later I’m sitting in Asda cafe, because I can’t actually find the house!! There’s been a GPS problem and a map problem. After about 2hrs I gave up looking and have called my lovely host, who fortunately isn’t staying all that far away, and she’s coming to rescue me shortly.

Even though I’m grateful to be rescued, and to the guy in the computer shop who fixed my phone in 10mins flat yesterday, and to my band who covered for me when I was more than an hour late for our gig, but the events of the last 24hrs combined with not much sleep for the past few days, has made me feel like everything is impossible and I wonder why I’m living this lifestyle.

Then I have to say this is where my pessimism fails. I accidentally start to feel alright about it when I see that these seeming symptoms of my alternative lifestyle are just another way of having a bad day, which is something that’s available to people in all walks of life. It’s nothing to do with living in a van. What’s happened is that I’m frustrated because I’m tired, delayed, been late for work, something I needed to use broke, and I want to go to bed but there isn’t one to hand. It happens to us all – mere first world problems.

There are certain things that can go wrong because of my houselessness, like having trouble getting hold of things that I’ve left in storage. But many people with homes have had different problems. Recently many have either been flooded, or had transport issues /missed work /couldn’t get home one night because of floods, whilst I quite happily drove to higher ground in the van, and slept wherever I was.

The question is, when each person encounters difficulties, are they leading the life they truly want to, but finding it hard? Or are they leading a life they don’t want to and finding it hard. The former is ok, no matter how hard it is, but the latter is never ok, even if that path seems ‘easier’. It’s said the people are happiest when they are doing something that is difficult that is important to them. So really, happiness isn’t all comfort, ease and pleasure, it’s more about being true, real and following through.